


Today I Saw A Deer

by merlot



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:24:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merlot/pseuds/merlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS meets a deer. Set during Portal 2, minimal spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today I Saw A Deer

Sunlight, it turned out, really was rather pleasant.

How long had it been since she'd seen real sunlight? Not the artificial sunlight that had filtered through the panels, not the sunlight piped in for the Hard Light Bridges back when they still worked, but real, bright, warm sunlight. The last time she'd even left the facility was an undeterminable number of years ago, and the exact memory of sunlight... it must have been erased at some point, along with anything precise about the world.

But she knew it had not changed. Sunlight was bright and beautiful and constant. The surroundings were impermanent and had changed so much in the decades she'd been under. Gone were the grey giants of tower blocks on the skyline. The grass had once been finely trimmed and perfect; and the park had been dotted with benches, the same benches the homeless had been snatched from. Of course, that had been before the sunshine collectors had been installed, so it had been foolish not to brace herself for a change. Still... it disarmed her. The grass was longer now, wilder now, and it had overflowed so it covered up the sunshine collectors like a green, bright tarpaulin. And only the ruins of the tower blocks remained, the hulking shells having been reduced to mere piles of brick. The new towers were organically crafted from wood and leaf. The sunlight still shone, bright and constant, and a bird chirped in joy.

Suddenly, in the trees, there was a flash of orange-brown. _Her_.

Almost on impulse, the neurotoxin activated - vents opened in the ground - gas billowed out.

At the same time, GLaDOS checked the monitors in the testing chambers. The lunatic had escaped again, she was sure of it. No matter how much - Wait, what?

Chell stood there, at the entrance of the chamber, eyes darting across the room, portal gun already ready. Not trying to escape, not weaving through trees, just standing there looking defiant. She must have noticed the camera trained on her - she immediately shot a portal at it and the screen went black. Easily fixed, of course. GLaDOS switched to another camera's view and watched her least favourite test subject for a while, just to calm down and to slow the frantic flow of data.

It took a little while to clear a small patch of the sunshine collector and use it as a makeshift camera to examine her kill. After all, sunlight hadn't been piped for decades, and the panels had been encased by nature.

A deer.

A deer lay on the ground, most of its corpse shrouded by grass. Its eyes were wide and black and glassy, and it had spindly legs that barely supported its weight. A ridiculous design that could use a lot of improvement.

With one of her hooks, she picked up the body and dumped it into the incinerator. Then she got to work taming the grass and cutting it to small, even blades. Next the trees - she ripped them from the ground and dropped them into the incinerator too. A few animals joined them, as well as the ruins of those tower blocks. It took quite a while, but finally everything to the horizon was flat; or, at least, everything but the shed and a small copse. It was the thickest part of this miniature forest, though all wildlife must have fled or died. Perhaps that made it a little less beautiful. A small, unidentifiable part of her argued that what made forests beautiful was the promise that they burst at the seams with pure life.

But who cared? She was getting far too distracted for her own good. To refocus herself, she pushed a camera up to the glass of the sunlight collector, expecting to see bright sunlight filtering through the thick trees.

A small black nose was pressed against the glass, along with huge black eyes and two tiny black hooves. This deer was much smaller than the first, perhaps a fawn, and it held as much life as the forest had.

GLaDOS felt that little part speak again. Perhaps it was the morality core. No, that had been destroyed, of course, by that dangerous mute lunatic. And it had never spoken before, only silently judged.

 _Don't be so harsh_ , the voice said. Perhaps the fawn could be part of a test on animal instinct when in a testing chamber designed as its natural habitat.

True.

 

_You could keep it just in case you need to test a new type of neurotoxin._

Also true.

And with a squeak as rusty pincers were jerked back into mechanical life, the fawn was carried to a new home deep inside Aperture.

\----

**A WHEATLEY LABORATORIES TEST**

Hypothesis: A mashy spike plate would be awesome! Especially if it spewed out fire. I haven't quite figured out that bit yet.

Prediction: The deer will die. Hopefully, if all goes to plan. If not, erm, it'll be a mangled deer, and there'll be a lot of cleaning up to do

Method: Convince deer to stay still for once - MASHY SPIKE PLATE to the FACE!

Observations: Deer blood is everywhere. The itch is still there. It's still not ENOUGH.


End file.
